Forum Discussion
the “Refresh now” button is not working
I currently have a Free license, and the “Refresh now” button is not working. It is greyed out/disabled, so I cannot click it.
When I switch/select a Pro license, the button becomes available and everything works correctly. However, I cannot find any clear information stating that “Refresh now” should not be available for the Free license.
15 Replies
Hi veronika_einai,
You need a pro license to be able to publish and modify reports. This includes setting up scheduled refreshes or manually refreshing a report.
Free users can't do much of anything in Fabric/Power BI, unless reports are on an F64 or higher capacity, then free users can view them.- Could you please let me know whether there have been any changes in your pricing or billing rules since July 1?I can add that we use a Power BI tenant for our users, but we have not made any changes on our side regarding licenses. We have not assigned any Pro licenses, activated any trial plans, or made any other changes that could affect billing.Could you please check and clarify whether anything has changed on your side?
Hi veronika_einai,
Since you are refreshing in your own My Workspace, a Free license is documented to allow scheduling and refreshing semantic models there, so Refresh now should not be greyed out. Since you have not made any changes regarding license and not assigned any Pro licenses, looks like this is service side issue rather than an expected licensing limitation.
I recommend opening a Microsoft Support ticket so that they can check both your tenant's licensing/billing status and the refresh behavior together
Create a Fabric and Power BI Support Ticket - Power BI | Microsoft Learn
Thanks and regards,
Anjan Kumar Chippa
Hi veronika_einai,
As we haven’t heard back from you, we wanted to kindly follow up to check if your issue is resolved? or have you raised a support ticket?
Thanks and regards,
Anjan Kumar Chippa
Hi veronika_einai,
This looks like expected behaviour based on the combination of license, workspace role, and semantic model permissions.Microsoft doesn’t always state it as “Refresh now is disabled for Free users”, but manually triggering Refresh now requires Write permission on the semantic model. Write permission is what allows a user to manually trigger a semantic model refresh.
Docs: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/service-datasets-permissionsWith a Free/Fabric Free license, users are mainly limited to viewing shared content when it is hosted in Premium/Fabric capacity. Higher workspace roles such as Contributor, Member, or Admin require Pro license or PPU.
Docs: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/fundamentals/end-user-features
There is also a similar community discussion here:
https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Service/Power-BI-license-for-refreshing/m-p/4144499So if the button becomes available immediately when you switch to Pro, that strongly suggests the Free license does not have the required permission level for that semantic model/workspace.
Best regards,
Solutions Architect · Microsoft Fabric Specialist · Parchitect
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Thank you for your response, but I still do not fully understand the situation. Literally a week ago, everything was working, and it had been working for many years. In other words, this is not a new account with a trial period — it is a very old account.
Previously, I was able to publish reports, configure scheduled refreshes, and refresh them manually, but now these options are not working.
Also, the information at this link https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/fundamentals/end-user-features says that a user with a free license can refresh a report in their own workspace. This is exactly my case.
Updating Media
Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Fabric Forum Community.
Parchitect tayloramy Thanks for the inputs.
I hope the information provided by users was helpful. If you still have questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to the community.
Thank you for your response, but I still do not fully understand the situation. Literally a week ago, everything was working, and it had been working for many years. In other words, this is not a new account with a trial period — it is a very old account.
Previously, I was able to publish reports, configure scheduled refreshes, and refresh them manually, but now these options are not working.
Also, the information at this link https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/fundamentals/end-user-features says that a user with a free license can refresh a report in their own workspace. This is exactly my case.
Hi veronika_einai,
Are you working in "My Workspace" or in a named workspace attached to a capacity?
Im working in "My Workspace"
Hi veronika_einai,
Can you post a screenshot?
ALso, what is the license on your workspace? Is it still set to pro or has it been moved to a capacity?No, I have always used a free account.
Another interesting point is that if I had previously set up scheduled refresh, it still works. However, I cannot edit it in any way now.
The “Refresh now” menu, as well as the options next to the schedule settings, are currently unavailable.
can you send a picture of workspace setting => type:
